The variety and types of threats encountered by soldiers in combat, as well as by law enforcement officers and others, continues to expand. Also, it can be difficult to be certain when circumstances are “safe,” and when combat may be imminent.
Soldiers have long worn protective armor to offset many kinds of ballistic and fragmentary threats. Such armor typically is worn over the user's clothing as one or more add-on pieces supported by a separate non-protective textile carrier, with protective elements often being inserted into a non-protective textile slip cover of the textile carrier. Typically, such body armor includes thick, rigid panels, and is too bulky, heavy, and inflexible to be worn at all times. Moisture transport can also be quite low for such armor, making the armor uncomfortable to wear for extended periods. And the added heat retention due to wearing the body armor on top of conventional clothing can result in significant heat stress for the user. As a result, conventional body armor is not always worn when it is needed.
Protective textiles can be produced by including protective fibers in a fabric, where the protective fibers have an average tenacity of at least 12 gpd. However, such protective textiles have not previously been used to fabricate garments that offer protection from ballistic and fragmentary threats. This is due to several garment-incompatible qualities that have been generally associated with protective fabrics, such as poor hand, poor acceptance of coloring, low abrasion resistance, and poor UV resistance. Instead, protective fabrics have generally been relegated to armor configurations that are worn over conventional clothing, and typically include a non-ballistic covering layer of conventional fabric to prevent UV and abrasion damage to the protective fabric, and to provide a desired visual color or pattern.
What is needed, therefore, is a body armor solution that provides good ballistic and fragmentary protection while maintaining good moisture transport, without subjecting the user to added weight, bulk, or heat stress, thereby allowing the body armor to be comfortably worn at nearly all times and under nearly all circumstances.